


Baby Blofis College Fund

by zipadeea



Series: how to co-parent your reckless demigod 101 [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Smut, Humor, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24394585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zipadeea/pseuds/zipadeea
Summary: Valerie calls her an hour later.“Sally, what the hell?”“That bad, huh?”“Bad? Sally, it’s gold. I went from squirming in my seat to crying genuine tears. And that twist, making him a Greek god, it’s exactly what we’re looking for right now. How soon can you get me the next chapter?”***In which Sally Jackson realizes by the time the new baby is eighteen, a semester of college will cost an arm and a leg. And those Fifty Shades of Grey books sure did make a lot of money.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Paul Blofis/Sally Jackson, Percy Jackson & Sally Jackson, Sally Jackson/Poseidon (Percy Jackson)
Series: how to co-parent your reckless demigod 101 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793647
Comments: 55
Kudos: 455





	Baby Blofis College Fund

**Author's Note:**

> This whole story is based on a tumblr post I cannot find anymore, so I'm sorry to whoever posted it first, about how Sally Jackson should write a romance novel about her tryst with Poseidon and how Percy would react. 
> 
> Obviously I was inspired. There's some language, but truly no smut in this technically. It's just implied. Lol it's basically crack that turned into feelings and made me laugh writing, so I hope you enjoy.

In the end, it’s really all Paul’s fault. 

Because her wonderful, sweet, idiotic husband is gone for the weekend, chaperoning a bunch of stupid teenagers at a speech and debate competition of all things, and he’s left her all alone. 

Knocked up with nowhere to go. 

Okay, obviously not all alone. Paul’s been calling every hour on the hour because he’s ridiculous, the doctor’s on speed dial, and Percy is just down the street at the movies with Annabeth. She’s warm and safe in the apartment and the fridge is well-stocked with pickles and ice cream. 

She’s _fine._

Except... 

There’s just—there are _things_ Sally forgot about being pregnant. Obviously, she’s experienced it all before, but the first time she was twenty and terrified and flying by the seat of her pants and frankly half-convinced she was going to give birth to a mermaid. Sally worked as many hours as she could back then and stumbled home each night to crack open the _Odyssey_ instead of reading _What_ _To_ _Expect When You’re Expecting_ like all the other good mothers-to-be who barely managed to defeat teenage pregnancy. 

Whatever. They weren’t giving birth to demigods. 

So, now she’s thirty-seven, and experiencing a “geriatric pregnancy.” Fucking asshole doctors. Who the fuck even has the right to call her geriatric, Sally looked fucking spectacular until her cold medicine didn’t mix with the birth control and Paul just had to-- 

Beside the point. Babies are good. Babies are blessings. This is exciting. 

Sally _is_ excited. 

But her “geriatric pregnancy” has put her hormones completely out of whack, she’s hungry all the time and would probably sleep twenty hours a day if her alarm clock would just shut the fuck up already. Her ankles look like balloons and her face is all puffy and gross and now-- 

Sally Jackson is _ridiculously_ horny. 

And her husband is _gone_. 

Of course, Sally could rectify the situation herself. She could. But it’s just not the same, and she feels tired and bloated and sludge-like, and her teenaged son and his girlfriend could walk through the door any minute. 

Not exactly ideal circumstances to meeting one’s needs. 

With a groan of frustration, Sally heaves herself up from the couch and paces to the kitchen, flinging open the refrigerator and pouring herself a glass of blue lemonade. She gulps it down quickly, and lifts her wrist to her mouth to lick up the errant drops that run down her hand. 

Then, she’s sees herself do it, out of the corner of her eye in the mirror across the hall. 

Much later, when the baby’s 529 plan has been settled and Zendaya has been cast to portray her in the film adaptation, Sally will recognize this as the moment her book is born. 

Because when horny, pregnant Sally Jackson sees herself lick up lemonade from her wrist, she remembers, suddenly and with vivid clarity, a beautiful boy doing the same thing at a bar, eighteen years previous. 

A beautiful boy with shiny dark hair and ocean green eyes, lounging languidly against the bar in the seediest dive in Montauk, the only one that would take fake IDs. She remembers the way his tongue had flicked out to catch the drips of beer on his wrist, the flash of his eyes to hers as they met across the room. She remembers his smile, sharp and white like a shark, and the sly wink that drew her in. 

And oh, Jesus Christ, does she remember that night. 

(Haha, Jesus. What blasphemy.) 

Like a sleepwalker, Sally finds herself at her desk, opening her laptop and typing like her life depends on it. The words flow out of her like they’re screaming to be heard, and Sally does nothing to stop them. Never in her life has inspiration come so quickly and completely, although, why shouldn’t it now? 

This is literally her life’s story. 

“Mom?” Sally jerks awake at the voice, wincing at the new crick in her neck as she turns to look up. Familiar green eyes bore into her own, slightly worried but dancing a bit, finding humor in the situation. 

Sally comes so close to calling Percy ‘Poseidon’ that she gags, and turns it hastily into a cough. 

Oh god. Bleach. She needs to go swallow fucking bleach, oh god. Her eyes flick to the thankfully dark screen before her and she takes a deep breath. She’s not sure what her face must look like at that moment, but Percy frowns. 

“You wanna—let's get you to bed, yeah?” he says, offering her an arm and gently helping her up. 

“Thanks, honey,” Sally croaks, allowing her son to guide her down the hall like the geriatric woman she now apparently is. “How was the movie?” 

“Hmmm, oh yeah, the movie,” Percy’s face flushes, and he uses his free hand to scrub the back of his neck, “Yeah, it was great. Pretty funny--,” 

“I thought you were seeing a scary movie.” Percy turns scarlet and Sally laughs. “I’m sure it was thirty dollars well-spent. Making out in a movie theater is always a special experience.” 

“Mom,” Percy groans, shaking his head as he smiles. 

And Sally stops short, suddenly and completely overwhelmed by this boy. By this baby who now towers over her, her first baby, her only family in the world for the longest time. 

Because at some point in her feverish writing, and in the strange dreams that followed, the memories had shifted from the heat and lust of her twentieth year to the awful memories of heartbreak and loneliness. She’d been so lost and afraid and angry at the world, at her uncle and her finances and the injustice of life. Nothing was fair, and everything was awful, and Sally Jackson had literally no one to help her, nowhere to turn. 

Then, suddenly, miraculously, there had been love. 

Percy realizes she’s crying before she even does, pulling her immediately into a hug. “Mom, what’s wrong?” he asks softly, and how on earth did she end up with such a sweet child? 

“Nothing, sorry, sorry,” she mumbles into his shoulder. He doesn’t let her go. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You know that, right?” 

She feels his nod. “And I’m the luckiest kid in the world to have you as a mom.” 

Sally’s pretty sure she’s kind of an asshole, though most people try to convince her otherwise. Either way, she must have been a fucking saint in a past life to have a kid like Percy. 

*** 

It takes Sally a full week to return to the wild draft from That Night, hidden in files within files on her locked laptop and innocuously named ‘Baby Blofis College Fund’. She tells herself she’ll read it through once, then delete it forever and scrub her eyes with soap until she’s possibly blind but who cares. Paul never has to know. 

But, here’s the thing. 

It’s really fucking good. 

Dread swells inside her as Sally reads line after line of the 15,000-word masterpiece she half-remembered writing the week before, in a haze of hormones and lust. 

Before she can second guess herself, Sally does a control replace, naming her main character Sarah Johnson. She does a quick scrub for any glaring errors, before sending the draft off to her friend Valerie, who worked with her publishing her first novel. 

_I know it’s different than my last work. Let me know what you think of it._

_-Sally_

She winces, takes a deep breath, and hits send. 

Valerie calls her an hour later. 

“Sally, what the fuck?” 

“That bad, huh?” 

“Bad?! Sally, it’s fucking gold. I went from squirming in my seat to crying genuine tears. And that twist, making him a Greek god, holy shit, it’s exactly what we’re looking for right now. How soon can you get me the next chapter?” 

And so, it begins. 

*** 

Sally completes the manuscript two weeks before the baby is due. She’s fat and tired and her back never stops hurting, and she waits until Percy is at camp for the weekend to sit Paul at the kitchen table and reveal her dirty little secret. 

Paul knows she’s been working on something new, has teased her the last few months and prodded her kindly, trying and failing to read her new, top-secret project. 

With a deep breath, Sally pushes the bound and printed manuscript across the table. 

“ _The Oceans Between Us_?” Paul says with a smile as he reads the cover page. “It’s a good title. Why are you using a pen name?” He looks at ‘S.L. Martin’ across the bottom of the page and frowns. 

Sally sighs. “You’ll understand once you’ve read it.” 

“Oh?” Paul’s thick eyebrows shoot into his hair line. Sally bites her lip and nods. 

“There are three things I need you to remember as you read this book. One: I love you with all my heart. Two: you always leave me completely satisfied.” Paul’s eyebrows, though Sally didn’t think it possible, rise even higher. “And three: by the time this baby is eighteen, a semester of college will probably cost a million dollars. And Valerie’s sales projections for this book are very, very good.” 

“Uh-huh,” Paul says softly, already opening the first page as he slips on his glasses. Sally rolls a red pen across the table to him. 

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” 

“Hmm,” Paul hums as she leaves. 

Sally goes to their bedroom and screams into the pillows. 

Then, of course, she falls asleep. 

*** 

Someone nudges Sally awake; the alarm clock beside tells her it’s 3:17 AM. Sally rolls herself and her mountain of a belly over to stare at Paul. 

He’s crying. 

“That was beautiful, Sally,” he says, stroking back her hair. “It was so raw and honest, and that ending with you and Percy, I mean, Theo in the book, but obviously it’s Percy, and you’re at the beach, I just--,” Paul takes a shaking breath, and Sally grips his hand. 

God, she loves him. 

“It was beautiful.” 

“Even the dirty sexy parts?” and Paul finally laughs. 

“I might have skimmed a bit in those sections to be honest. Some of it was very interesting, though. Are you sure you don’t want to try--,” 

Sally shakes her head quickly. “I was nineteen, Paul. I will never bend like that again.” 

Paul laughs again and lays down beside her, his hand reaching out gently to run along the swell of her belly. “It’s kind of lovely how being pregnant again made you reminisce about the first time you were.” 

What a sweet way of saying pregnant geriatric Sally Jackson was ridiculously horny so she started writing smut. She’ll save that one for the interviews. 

*** 

“Why didn’t you tell me you published another book?” Percy asks her a few months later, when he walks in the door from school. Estelle is asleep against her chest as Sally rocks in the chair, and she holds a finger to her lips to keep Percy’s voice down. 

Sally walks back to the nursery and settles Estelle in the crib, before returning to the living room to face her doom. 

“ _The Oceans Between Us,_ right?” Percy asks, and Sally nods. “Piper said her mom was raving about it, gave copies to all her kids to read.” 

Aphrodite—Jesus Christ. Sally swallows thickly. “Has Piper read it yet?” 

“Nah--she’s just as shit at reading English as the rest of us. Is there an audiobook?” 

Oh, _God_. “No, no, not yet. How’d you know it was me?” 

Percy tilts his head in confusion. “Piper said her mom said--,” Percy frowns, “Did you not use your name?” 

“Um--,” 

“What’s this book about, anyway?” 

“It’s--well, you see, sweetheart--,” 

Percy looks down at his phone as it pings. He squints his eyes, then uses the audio function to play the messages. 

“From Annabeth: Your mom’s book is number one on the NYT bestseller list question mark exclamation point question mark I didn’t even know she was writing another book period Just bought a copy period Tell her congrats from me.” 

Shit. 

*** 

It takes Annabeth reading aloud the last chapter of the book to Percy for her son to forgive her for literally publishing the steamy story of his conception for the world to read. 

(But hey, she’s on week four at number one on the New York Times’ bestseller list. It’s not too shabby. And Estelle is definitely set for college.) 

“’ _I could protect you,’_ ” Sally hears Annabeth reading down the hall, in Percy’s bedroom. “’ _Say the word and I’ll build you a golden palace under the sea. We could be happy forever.’ Poseidon cups her face gently and uses his calloused thumbs to wipe away the tears Sarah hadn’t even noticed beginning to fall._

_It would be so easy to say yes. So easy to finally be finished, and happy, to let this man, this god take care of her the rest of her days. Sarah is tired of fighting for every little inch, just to have another mile taken away. The world has been cruel and unkind to her in so many ways, day after day, year after year and--_

_And Theo chooses that moment to yawn widely, his tiny fingers scrabbling to reach her even tucked away under the blanket._

_She’s not just fighting for herself anymore._

_For the first time she can remember, Sarah is not alone._

_‘I love you,’ she admits to Poseidon, and his green eyes soften. ‘But I love him more. I want him to live a life worth remembering.’_

_Poseidon takes a shuddering breath, leaning forward to rest his forehead against her own. ‘I can’t help you. I’m not—I'm not allowed to stay.’ He reaches out and gently brushes the feathery black hair away from Theo’s face._

_‘You will always be with me,’ Sarah whispers, eyes only for the child in her arms, this sweet little miracle who has made the words irrevocably true._

_Poseidon leans down and presses a kiss to the crown of the baby’s head, muttering something in Ancient Greek. He stills for a moment, and Sarah knows without a shadow of a doubt that Poseidon is locking the moment in his memories. That eons from now, when she and Theo are nothing but dust in the wind, Poseidon will remember the exact shade of blue in the sky above them, the height of the waves crashing at their feet. He’ll remember the smell of Theo’s head, the tears in Sarah’s eyes and the immutable feeling of helplessness in this goodbye._

_Then, Poseidon straightens, and leans forward to kiss her forehead._

_‘You are a queen among women, my love. Do not let anyone forget it.'_

_With the next swift ocean breeze, Poseidon is gone._

_‘Just you and me, now, sweetheart,’ Sarah says quietly to the baby tucked against her chest. She sits down in the surf and holds him close. He smells like baby powder and salt and every good thing in the world._

_Sarah will never regret this choice, no matter what may come._

_‘Just you and me.’"_

Percy hugs her for a long time after that. 

*** 

A few months later it’s summer again, and the whole family heads to Montauk for Estelle’s first trip to the beach. Paul’s flipping burgers back at the cabin, Sally’s settled under an umbrella with a novel, and Percy and Annabeth are down at the surf, laughing at Estelle’s sweet giggles when Percy leans down to dip her feet in the waves. 

There’s a swift breeze, and the salt seems to hang in the air for a moment. Without looking up from her book, Sally waves a hand forward, beckoning the man to sit with her on the towel. 

“Hello, Poseidon,” Sally says lightly, finally looking up from her book. The man is beaming at her, lines crinkling around his eyes with the wide smile. “Come to turn me into a snail for my impertinence?” 

Poseidon laughs. She’d forgot the sound of his laughter, loud and bright. It’s just like Percy’s. 

“I love you far too much for that, my dear.” And Sally finally smiles. 

It’s not like she’d been worried or anything but...Okay, she’d been worried. Who actually has the gall to write sexy tell-all books about gods when said gods exist? 

Apparently, the mother of the boy who sends Medusa’s head to said gods when he’s only twelve and hasn’t even met them yet. 

Well, he had to learn it somewhere. 

“Your daughter is beautiful,” Poseidon says, staring off at the children in the surf, his gaze fond. “A sweet little star.” 

“Yes,” Sally agrees, and they sit for a moment in comfortable silence. 

“Our time together was precious. I’m glad you do not regret it.” Poseidon finally says, resting his tanned and weathered hand on top of hers. The callouses on his thumb trace her wrist. 

“Never. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” 

“And you are happy?” Poseidon asks, his voice soft in anticipation. 

Sally looks back at her husband, whistling to himself at the grill. She looks out at her children in the waves, laughing in delight. 

“Happier than I can say. It’s a good life. A life worth remembering.” 

Poseidon smiles again, bright and happy, just like he did in the seedy bar down the road all those years ago. 

“You are a queen among women, Sally Jackson.” 

Sally grins. “I know.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Also, apparently there's a book already called the oceans between us? Sorry, I just really liked the title, but now that i've googled i might go read the real book, it sounds interesting. Anyway, hope you enjoyed, would love to hear your thoughts on this!


End file.
